Mitt says he pays close to 15 percent rate

Mitt Romney, who has a high net worth, pulled the curtain back a bit on his income when asked about the effective tax rate he's been paying during a Q and A with reporters in Florence, S.C.:

"What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything. Because my last 10 years, I’ve—my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past, whether ordinary income or earned annually. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speakers fees from time to time, but not very much.”

Romney made more than $360,000 in speaker's fees between Feb. 2010 and Feb. 2011, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure statement.

Meanwhile, after giving a "probably" last night in the debate on whether he'd release his tax returns, Romney told reporters that he will do it around tax time, per POLITICO's Reid Epstein:

"We looked at prior races… the tradition has been the nominee releases his tax returns in April and I know that if I'm the nominee people will want to see the most recent year and see what happened in the most recent year what things are up to date. And so they’ll want to see the tax return that come out in April. And so rather than have multiple releases on tax returns, why, we’ll wait until we have tax returns for the recent year completed and then release them."

It's never clear how much voters care about the issue of releasing tax returns. But not doing so would play into a narrative about Romney and his wealth - and keeping the amounts to himself - and would be fodder for editorial boards to routinely thwack him over transparency.